Engine trouble with Lotus 98T

[David Brooks]

Hi.

I have just completed the 7 race series in the career mode that uses the lotus 98t. In the last race at Monza i was getting warnings from my crew chief app that my engine wasn't sounding good. Sure enough a few laps later i get the mechanical fault flag on the screen. The car still seems to go ok and i go on to complete the race.

Just wondering if anyone knows what has caused this. I had the radiator open fully and the crew chief told me engine temperatures were fine. I did have the boost increased to 5.3 bar and whilst this might be the obvious explanation it didn't do this to me in the other 6 races of the season. Also that was only slightly up on the default and if you can't even tweak it a bit what is the point in having it.

Does anyone know if engine damage like that accumulates over the season?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mike_grpA]

I've done a lot of racing in the 98T (great fun car, hey?) and I can shed some light on it for you mate.

The standard boost level is already quite high, and will slowly wear the engine, and turning it up will accelerate this wear. The full boost is only there for qualifying. You have to remember that in F1, these Renault engines would be turned up for qualifying, and would barely survive a single flying lap.

I remember Ferrari used to dump a bucket of cold water on the turbos when the car pulled into the pits after the quali lap, because even though it'd destroy the turbo, it was preferential to the very real threat of fire in the pit lane.

Cars often blew an engine during quali, even though the engines were brand new, and only used for one flying lap.

As for why it's happened at Monza, and not other tracks, Monza will have you on full throttle at high revs for much more of a lap than the other tracks in the 98T career, and when you're on full boost, full throttle, and high in the rev range, that's when the engine will be wearing it's fastest. Even though you only bumped the boost up by 0.6 Bar, that is still 8.7PSI, which is a not insignificant amount of boost. Most turbo road cars don't run more than that standard.

I always test the car at full boost in practice, and see how much the engine is wearing per lap (I use Pcars dash app, which tells you the engine's "health" in %). I also test at lower levels, like 5, or 5.5 Bar, to get an idea of how many laps the engine will likely last at different boost levels. This way I can find how much boost I can safely run to make the distance of the race. Different tracks will have a different impact on the engine, so this can help maximise the performance for each track. Long tracks and tracks where you spend a high percentage of the lap on full throttle will require lower boost to make the race distance than tighter and smaller tracks.

Also, I'll add that the boost number is actually wrong in Pcars. They all have the 1 Bar of normal atmospheric pressure added onto the number under wastegate. So you'll notice even in N/A cars, it says 1 Bar. This is why the max boost seems a bit excessive. So your 5.3 Bar is actually 4.3 Bar of boost. Which is still a whopping 62PSI!

 

[David Brooks]

Thanks for the response. Makes sense.